United States Shipbuilding Company

[4] Following this course, the enterprise's central designing office would apportion the shipbuilding work to the yard best suited to handle the project, therefore increasing competition with European shipyards.

[7] A renowned naval architect and public servant, Lewis Nixon, was chosen to lead the venture, and helped attract several major shipyards to participate.

As one scholar would later write of this plan, "the theory was impossible; the condition was untenable; the trust, as it was manufactured, was impracticable; and the United States Shipbuilding Company was insolvent.

Working with a cotton industry bank known as the Trust Company of the Republic, they sought out underwriters, and planned to issue stock and sell bonds, in order to provide the funds to buy the plants and then operate them at a profit.

An initial prospectus was prepared for issue on May 7, 1901, but the actual issuance was withheld at the last moment because of what became known as the Northern Pacific "short squeeze" of 1901, a panic that occurred on that date.

[11] By the time that a prospectus for USSC was formally issued in June 1902, Newport News and Vickers Sons & Maxim were no longer listed as participating interests, but Harlan & Hollingsworth Co. of Wilmington, Delaware,[5] and Eastern Shipbuilding Company of New London, Connecticut were now included.

[3] By bringing Bethlehem into the combination, however, USSC could send a message to potential investors that Morgan was now behind the overall venture, and claim to be the world's only company capable of building a battleship complete with armament, armor and all equipment.

[2][13] In August 1902 USSC purchased the Union, Bath, Hyde Windlass, Crescent, Moore, Eastern, Harlan & Hollingsworth shipyards, the Canda Manufacturing company, and the capital stock of Bethlehem Steel.

[3] It soon became clear that the Bath, Crescent, Moore, Eastern, and Harlan & Hollingsworth shipyards were deeply indebted, and that the new trust lacked the ability to meet charges arising from the bond issuance.

"[2] The promoters were immediately forced to personally borrow $1.5 million from New York banks, to make up for cash that never arrived from foreign subscribers.

In September 1902, when Young was in France in a futile attempt to convince subscribers to invest, Ann Pulitzer, a former prostitute, was murdered in his New York apartment.

[26] In 1918, New York's highest court ordered a retrial of claims by shareholders of the Trust Company of the Republic against railroad president George Gould, a member of its board of directors who failed to attend any of the meetings where key votes were cast.